He held the mask tenderly for a moment before replacing it.
The plastic face stared up at me. Odd how a mask with holes for eyes and mouth could stare, but it seemed alive in that moment, in spite of the black and red lines on its transparent neck. It wasn’t a death mask, not an impression of a dead person’s face fashioned for posterity or family record, but an imprint of a living human being, made for treatment, for healing.
‘You know, a lot of our patients keep in touch, they come back to say hello. Their families. We get close to them. And they come from as far away as Orange, some of them. The patients live in at the hospital while they’re having their treatment. We get to know them pretty well.’
‘And the radiotherapists? Are you a close-knit group?’
Colin didn’t answer immediately. He busied himself tidying the cupboard, bending down and rearranging the masks on the bottom shelf. With his back to me, he said, ‘We do our job, that’s what’s most important. Let’s see, what else is there? We make our own shields as well.’
He took what looked like a moulded wedge of lead from a shelf above the now neat face masks.
‘These have to be done individually too of course. This one was made to go over a lung, to shield the healthy part of the lung from the electrons. We work with the technicians. We rotate all the jobs, so sometimes we’re giving treatment, sometimes we’re planning it. We use an X-ray simulator for that. I can show you in a minute. Sometimes we’re doing technical stuff like this. This one here—’ Colin picked up part of a lead face mask with one eye hole cut out. ‘This was for a tumour at the corner of the left eye. Feel how heavy it is.’
I weighed the mask-shield in my hand and asked, ‘Did Niall ever talk to you about what was bothering him?’
Colin stared down at the shield as though he regretted having let me hold it, tilting his whole body away from me. The effect was almost comical, like our dog Fred when he wanted to sneak a sandwich crust that Peter had left on the floor.
‘I didn’t really know Niall Howley.’ Colin cleared his throat. ‘Actually I didn’t know him at all.’
‘Did he have friends here, among the radiographers?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did it ever strike you that Niall was hiding something?’
‘No.’ Colin went red, the painful blush of very fair-skinned people reaching right up through his scalp.
I handed back the lead mask and he replaced it carefully in its position on the shelf. He hesitated, then turned on his heel and left the room.
I followed, determined to go on asking questions about Niall, no matter how uncomfortable they made him. That question about having something to hide—wasn’t the right answer yes, that his life was being taken over by a MUD? And why didn’t Colin know who, in the hospital, had been a friend of Niall’s? I was forming a disturbing impression, that not only were Colin’s eyes different colours, but they looked in different directions as well, as though better to avoid having to meet mine.
He marched ahead and I hurried to keep up.
‘Doesn’t it strike you as rather contradictory? Niall cared about his work, and it obviously requires a great deal of concentration. Yet he sat up all night playing a computer game.’
Colin didn’t answer. I persisted. ‘What do you think?’
Colin turned to face me, frowning. ‘I’ve already told you, I didn’t know him personally.’
‘Are you interested in MUDs yourself?’
‘Of course not.’ Colin turned away from me with an expression of disgust. ‘I don’t know anything about them.’
He went on to show me more glistening machines, one the X-ray simulator he’d referred to earlier. But I’d reached saturation point and barely took in anything about them.
He raised his head at the sound of footsteps hurrying past in the corridor. The door to the room containing the simulator was three-quarters shut, so he couldn’t see who it was. I wondered if it was Dr Fenshaw, if Colin recognised his step, and had been listening for it, if that might explain the undercurrent of anxiety in his manner, an ear tuned through practice, an already nervous disposition, to his boss’s footsteps.
I wondered whether, in common with a lot of other nervous people, Colin wasted energy worrying, that his instinct was immediately to worry, or whether there was something particular about Fenshaw that required attentive listening, and about Niall’s death that required him to say no automatically.
The steps receded. Further off, voices rose and fell. The air-conditioning sighed. Colin was staring into space, hands in the pockets of his lab coat.
‘What happens if something goes wrong with one of the accelerators?’
He started, shook his hands free. ‘We’d get someone from the Biomedical Engineering Department. What I mean is, there are full-time technicians here in the hospital. If they can’t fix it, Dr Fenshaw rings Sydney. We can have an engineer here within three hours of reporting a problem.’
‘The manufacturers are in Sydney?’
‘A rep. Wilton’s an American company. In the very unlikely event of it turning out to be something the guy from Sydney couldn’t handle, he’d ring the States. We can get parts from the States in under two days.’
Colin was controlling his voice with an effort, but determined to go ahead and make his point. ‘The thing you have to understand about the treatment is—it’s critical. I wasn’t exaggerating when I told you about that patient who came in thirty-five days straight. We’ve worked over Christmas, Easter, so a patient won’t have to miss a day. The Ventacs are incredibly sophisticated machines. Sure there are going to be minor technical problems from time to time. But it’s important to remember that every minute they’re operating here, they’re saving lives.’
My stomach was knotting with the intensity of this. What had I said to bring it on? And what was it about Niall Howley that Colin didn’t want to talk about? Was it that Niall had killed himself? Was this sufficient reason for Colin to want to dismiss him, and subtly, or not so subtly, put him down?
On my way from the radiotherapy department back to the side of the hospital where I’d parked my car, I recognised Eve, the young woman who’d come to set up the treatment room while Colin was putting the accelerator through its paces.
I hurried to catch up with her and, when I was half a dozen steps behind, called out her name.
She swung round and stared at me blankly.
‘Eve?’ I repeated. ‘It’s Sandra Mahoney. I met you a little while ago. With Colin Rasmussen.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh yes.’
I could see her caught between wanting to hurry on to whatever business she had waiting, and not wanting to be rude to me in case I was somebody official.
I walked up level with her. ‘I won’t keep you. I was just wondering, did you know Niall Howley?’
‘He was the guy who died, right? No, I didn’t know him.’
‘Could you tell me who in the department he was friends with, who might have known him best?’
Eve looked startled, then guilty. ‘Why do you want to know? Who are you anyway?’
‘Niall’s mother’s hired me to see if I can find out more about what led to his death.’
‘Oh,’ Eve said. ‘Colin—’ She bit her lip. ‘Sorry, I’m in rather a hurry.’ She began to move away.
‘Did Niall have any friends here?’
‘They—we’re all new, you see.’
‘You mean nobody working in the department now was here when Niall was?’
‘Except Colin. And of course Dr Fenshaw.’
‘What happened to the others?’
Eve caught sight of someone out of the corner of her eye. ‘Dominic!’
A tall, good-looking man was bearing down on us, lifting his hand in a quick salute.
‘Nick! I’m sorry!’ Eve’s olive skin had gone a deep red-brown.
The man ignored me and smiled at Eve, giving the impression that he was annoyed, but prepared to let her make it
up to him.
Eve turned to me. ‘I have to go. I’m sorry.’
I thanked her and said goodbye, wishing handsome Dominic had been held up somewhere too.
. . .
Coloured arrows on the floor converged towards two men unaware of me, half hidden from me by the angle of a corridor. Colin’s face was thin and flushed. His blond hair flopped forward, and his gestures were exaggerated, arms poking out of the too-short sleeves of his white coat. He was appealing to Dr Fenshaw, who was leaning towards him the way a man did when he was certain of his power of attraction.
It was only a moment before Fenshaw continued on along the corridor, Colin staring after him, red-faced and intent. I was sure that, whatever Colin was asking for, the answer had been no. He stood looking anxiously after his superior with his eyes from once discrete, lost twins. Then he too moved away, energetic suddenly, in a hurry, his white coat a spinnaker that the wind has filled.
I thought of following, then decided I didn’t want either man to know I’d seen him. Though I’d left the accelerators behind a maze of corridors, I was aware, in my inner ear, of their constant, authoritative song, a long, one-toned exhalation.
. . .
I phoned Eamonn that evening and thanked him again for making time to see me. I asked if he’d been aware that there’d been a complete turnover of radiotherapists at the Monaro Hospital, apart from Colin Rasmussen. Eamonn said he’d heard about it.
‘How many were there?’
‘Six, I think. Six or seven.’
I asked him if he’d help me track them down. After a pause, he replied in his mild, pleasant way that he’d see what he could do.
I put the phone down conscious of the pressing in of memories. The huge, unquiet breath of the accelerators had followed me home, but it couldn’t be something I associated with my mother’s illness, because she’d had no radiation treatment.
There’d been wards with other women. I remembered how symmetrical and alike these women had looked, putting on a good face in pink and aqua bedjackets. Women of a certain age with a lifetime’s practice at putting on a face.
The phrases, ‘Just a few tests love.’ ‘Be out of here tomorrow.’ And she was. But in a few months back again, to a ward identical in almost all respects. More tests. What had I been thinking of? Or was it that I had not been thinking, had refused to think? Had got back on the plane and home to Canberra and Derek?
The four or six bed ward. The women sitting against pillows primped for visitors. My mother’s false cheerfulness repelling conversation. Not her cowardice, but mine.
. . .
‘Hey you,’ I said to Ivan late that night, pulling on his arm. ‘Do you know what time it is?’
‘In a minute Sandy. Don’t wait up for me. Go to bed.’
‘I did. Hours ago.’
Ivan had found a game similar to Niall’s, and was playing it for all he was worth.
‘Celtic magic,’ I said crossly. ‘Ruined castles. A bad guy lurking behind every rock.’
I recalled Ivan’s cold side of the bed, my side cooling down, and was irritated because I knew it was a false opposition to set up—work and bed.
‘It’s given me an idea.’
‘What kind of an idea?’
‘Not a MUD,’ Ivan intoned. ‘MUDs are boring. I’ve got to work it out. Dangerous to talk about it too much. Words might steal it.’
I lay awake waiting for him, then I must have fallen asleep because he woke me with waves of bathroom air and a smell of toothpaste.
I lay against his chest and felt damp hair. ‘What are you doing having a shower in the middle of the night?’
‘The water splashed while I was cleaning my teeth.’
‘You’ll catch cold.’
‘Australians have no idea of cold.’ Ivan rolled over, getting comfortable. ‘It’s true Sandy. This doona is a heap of shit. I have to go to sleep now. Wake me up at seven.’
‘You’ll be stuffed.’
‘I’ll catch a nap at lunchtime.’
I liked the moonlight coming in between and under skimpy curtains, and had always resisted Derek’s nagging that we should get proper, made-to-measure ones. But that night I would have liked the darkness to be total. Perversely awake—Ivan was snoring lightly in five minutes—I did not want to look at the bulk of him beside me, or rather would have preferred to see it only with my inner eye.
Black hair and eyes, and thick white skin, were transferable and travelled well. What would a childhood of Canberra summers do to Katya’s? High cheekbones instructed eyes towards an almost slant. I wanted to say to Ivan, look, I may not know much about families, about yours practically nothing because you refuse to talk about it. But I do know this. There’s never as much time as you think.
I stared at objects and felt my attempt to force a solid and recognisable shape from them to be a kind of joke against myself. A chill passed between my shoulderblades. I thought that maybe, on other nights, Ivan lay watching me asleep. Ivan didn’t look for patterns in relationships, in people, but through the digital images he created, and that were his greatest pleasure, suspended now because of having to work eight hours a day at the ANU. It occurred to me that he needed me to be a certain type of person, a certain type of Australian person—down-to-earth and plodding. He’d remarked once that Brook and I were two of a kind.
Ivan’s face was blank with fatigue in the early morning, that once favourite time for sex, in the days when it was still supposed to be a secret from Peter asleep in the next room, Derek in America. I pictured a man sitting in front of a computer screen, a young man with his life ahead of him, concentrating, deeply moved. Dead before his time, this young man now stood between me and Ivan, me and Brook, me and Moira Howley. Eamonn had described him as independent. Colin Rasmussen had had little time for him. As Ferdia, he’d been respected and admired, but had managed to make an enemy of God.
There was the question of knowledge for its own sake, whether such a thing was possible, and, if so, what its consequences might turn out to be. And the related idea that, for certain people—Niall among them?—idealism equipped them poorly for dealing with people for whom knowledge was a way to power.
Seven
I emailed Sorley Fallon.
Why did you decide to execute Ferdia?
It was my MUD. I ran it. I could do what I liked.
Why that form of punishment? What had Ferdia done?
Ferdia turned traitor. Before that he was the best player, the greatest Hero the Castle ever had.
Did you give Ferdia a chance to demonstrate his innocence?
Dozens of them.
Do you believe Niall was so devastated by your decision to execute Ferdia that he took his own life?
That idea is absurd.
Were you questioned by the police about Niall’s death?
No.
Civic police station was an ambiguous refuge with rain knifing straight down off the Brindabellas. September sometimes threw up days that were colder and wetter than mid-July, Canberra days that made people feel spring had made an appearance only to mock them.
I’d dressed with more care than usual for my interview with Detective-Sergeant McCallum, in a skirt, boots I’d cleaned the night before, a neat woollen jumper. Now my boots were decorated with frills of mud and the hem of my skirt had been in the wrong place at the wrong time when a car skidded to a halt at the Northbourne traffic lights. Because of the weather, all the Civic car parks were full, and even though I’d left myself plenty of time, I had to park way over on Marcus Clarke and ended up running and sloshing my way to the station.
Rows of wet people filled the waiting benches. Maybe it was the rain, the throwback to winter, maybe it was the fact that I’d sat up late the night before reading the police report that Brook had finally brought round, but I felt depressed.
Brook’s helpfulness. The way he’d smiled and said, ‘Here you go Sunshine.’ Borrowing the report for me, so I could read it at my leisure,
copy what I liked. His pride in his ability to do this, even with the delay. The dry courtesy of that generation of policemen. I’d asked him if he’d read it himself, if he’d known that all the radiotherapists who’d worked with Niall had left except for one, if he knew that Niall’s best friend had described him as happy on the night he’d died. Brook said no to all three questions, the careful no of a man who’d done what I wanted, but reluctantly, who did not want to be pushed into telling me I should leave well enough alone.
I’d started reading and was immediately disappointed. There was plenty of technical information, lists of the bones Niall had broken in his fall. But as to motive, states of mind, leads pointing to other people and the parts they might have played—it was less than sketchy. I’d built it up in my mind as giving me a clear direction, something I should never have done.
Moira hadn’t seen it, had not asked to see it. She hadn’t looked at the photographs either. Her imagination supplied her with a horror that they could not match. Would they have added to it though? Would they have seemed unreal?
Moira spent each day alone in her house with memories for company. Did she count the hours till Bernard came home from work? Did she dread that moment when he walked through the door? I thought of the television set and two chairs facing it, a black joke surely, a rotten nasty joke. And of the mother sitting, hands fondling, biting at one another, in her son’s empty room, watching a blank screen.
Dr Fenshaw’s testimony had stuck in my mind. The beginning came back to me almost word for word.
I have known Niall Howley for a little over two years, since he began working in the radiotherapy unit. During that time, and in particular in the last six months, I was disappointed, indeed distressed, to find Howley’s work deteriorating. His ability to concentrate and to perform even simple tasks could not be relied on. It became a habit for him to come to work tired, and indeed on more than one occasion, it looked as though he’d had no sleep at all. I tried to talk to him about what was bothering him but, I am afraid, got nowhere. On the day in question, Howley appeared much the same, that is, physically tired, withdrawn and uncooperative.
The White Tower Page 7
